


Echoes

by Keagan_Ashleigh



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Carl Powers case, Drug Addiction, Drug Use, Episode: The Abominable Bride, Ficlet, Heavy Angst, Holmes Brothers, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Kid Sherlock, M/M, Mycroft Being a Good Brother, Pre-Episode: s01e01 A Study in Pink, Sherlock Holmes and Drug Use, Sherlock's Past, Sherlock's future, Teen Sherlock, Underage Drug Use
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-26
Updated: 2016-01-26
Packaged: 2018-05-16 08:13:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,610
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5820907
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Keagan_Ashleigh/pseuds/Keagan_Ashleigh
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>1989, Sherlock Holmes is 13 years old and solve his very first case. He goes to Scotland Yard to give the police the most crucial clue about the murder of Carl Powers, but no one would listen to him.<br/>Mycroft comes to pick him and instead of comforting the boy, he sees there a way to help his brother face the difficulties of life. In an attempt to do the right thing, he gives the first impulse that will lock his brother into loneliness until their brother dies and finish to isolate Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Echoes

**Author's Note:**

> This is a short story that goes from Sherlock childhood until post-TAB, it comes from a drawing I was doing of Sherlock as a young boy, I wanted to write a few lines about Carl Powers case just to give the drawing a caption, but it ended up as a ficlet.  
> I've put the drawing with the ficlet.  
> Maybe I will rework it to make it longer, I don't know yet. :)
> 
> Edit: I may have done a good bunch of grammar mistakes, it was really late I wrote it. I'm correcting the most I see but I haven't slept this night so I'm not sure I'll find them all. :o)

“Come, Sherlock.”  
“But... Mycroft, won’t they listen to me?”  
“No.”  
“Why?”  
“You are a child.”  
“And then I’m cleverer than most of them. If they listen to me they’ll solve the case. They have to listen!”  
“Things aren’t always how we want it to be, you know. You have to understand this, brother.”  
“This is unfair.”  
“I know. But that’s how it goes.”  
“I swear one day they’ll have no choice but listen to me, trust me Mycroft, one day they’ll beg for me to help them and then I’ll say no. I’ll say no. I swear it.”

Mycroft stops and look at his little brother, there is tears in his big blue eyes, and he tries to hide them with the curls long enough to cover his eyes if he bend his head low enough.  
He is still so young... Mycroft thought. Sherlock is just 13, he is so passionate and stubborn, I should have predict he would go to Scotland Yard on his own.

Three days earlier, Carl Powers was assassinated and Sherlock wasn’t long to be worried about this apparently insignificant fact that the boy’s shoes were nowhere to be found.  
Mycroft warned him not to get involve in matters that where beyond him. As an attempt to protect him he forbidden him to go bother anyone with his silly theory, but he underestimated Sherlock’s determination and instead of going to school as he usually did he went in the vain hope to be heard.  
But adults don’t often listen children, he get that now, though he yelled “I’m not a child”. They all laughed at him and made him solve math problems as if he was some fair monkey, when he attempted to prove them his cleverness.  
The policeman he deduced was mad as hell against him but all of this was useless.

They made fun of him a while before calling Sherlock’s home. Mycroft answered, as their parents weren’t home but in Boston for a conference they wanted to attend. So Mycroft came to pick Sherlock - little boy angry, distraught, ashamed, not understanding why he got rejected that way. He thought - hoped - that adults would be kinder than other children, mature enough to be respectful, but this experience taught him they worth no more than the children who bully him on a daily basis.

That’s tough for a kid to realise they have no ally amongst people supposed to provide safety, Mycroft understood this, and it broke his heart, though there was nothing he could do, at least he thought so.  
No, this is not fair, little brother, but you are not alone.

No, you are not alone. I will always be there for you.

Mycroft forced Sherlock to rise his head with his hand under Sherlock’s chin.

“Wipe your tears. And learn from that lesson.”

Frowning his eyebrows, Sherlock pushed away Mycroft’s hand, thinking “You don’t understand. You don’t understand, you’re just like the others. I hate you.”  
Instead he looked at Mycroft, a wild defiance in his eyes, and ran away to the car that was waiting for them.  
Mycroft stood a moment in silence, in the middle of the crowd walking here and there around him, in front of the New Scotland Yard building.

He could have convince these people to listen to his brother, he was twenty years old and had already a good situation, he could have helped. However, he took this bad experience to push Sherlock forward. His brother was clever, and stubborn, Mycroft knew that he was able to rise up from his misery and make the most of it, he was confident in his little brother’s determination.  
Sherlock told him with half words, he will make people beg for him to help them. So the next day, when Sherlock came home with five big books about criminology and locked himself in his room to study, Mycroft wasn’t surprised. And if he did made fun of him later and made Sherlock face more and more frustration in face of the ideas and theories Mycroft was pushing away with the back of his hand, he knew it only made Sherlock more and more determined, stronger - but also lonelier.  
Clever people ought to be lonely, Mycroft often thought, and he, on the same way, was getting lonelier and lonelier as he climbed the steps to success in politics.

Three years later though, when Sherlock was 17, Mycroft feared for the first time of his life that Sherlock’s determination wouldn’t be enough. Because their brother died and their whole world shattered. Both of them put on themselves the responsibility of what happened, and when Mycroft became even colder and distant than he ever was, Sherlock disappeared for two weeks.

Mycroft looked for him in every corner of each street of London, only to find him lying on a filthy mattress in a gloomy abandoned house near the docks of Beckton, sweating, holding a tourniquet in one hand, the glass of a syringe shining in the obscurity.  
Mycroft first thought was “he looks so fragile”. Sherlock was so skinny he looked like a little boy wearing his father’s clothes to play at being grown up. He looked so vulnerable, and he seemed to be in such a pain Mycroft struggled not to break.

He sat next to his brother and caressed his hair gently, but Sherlock was so far away he wasn’t responding to the gentle touch. With a sight, Mycroft stood up and grabbed Sherlock’s arm, forcing him to stand. He couldn’t stand and walk on his own so Mycroft lifted him on his back.  
Oh dear God he was so light, so light it felt like lifting a small dog.

Once at home, Mycroft put his brother to bed and waited for him to wake up. He expected Sherlock to burst in anger, in tears, in anything furious, Sherlock instead woke up as if nothing happened. Took a shower, headed to the kitchen to drink a cup of coffee, and was about to leave.  
Mycroft retained him and, not knowing what to say, how to react, worry but unable to do something, he just said:  
“Make a list.”  
“Of what?”  
“Everything you’ve taken last night.”  
“Why?”  
“Just do it.”

Confused at the request, Sherlock executed himself anyway, and wrote the list Mycroft was asking. While he put it in his pocket, carefully, Mycroft added:

“From now on, I want you to make a list. Every time you do something like that again, I want you to make a list.”  
“It won’t happen again.”  
“I hope so, but promise me.”  
Sherlock looked desperate, as for a second the words echoed in his mind, somewhere far, far away in the depths of his subconsciousness a forgotten voice echoed “promise me”. Without being able to remember fully he had a vision of him breaking his promise. Don’t make me promise, please, he begged in his mind, without knowing why it was frightening him.  
He finally came to the resolution he would never break a promise again, even though he had no conscious memory of the one he broke.  
“I promise.” Sherlock answered.

Still worried and full of fear, Mycroft was relieved. Sherlock went away for the day, and came back the evening, telling Mycroft he got things arranged with university administration for the days he missed.

Sherlock’s determination didn’t failed him. Neither his determination to graduate and become the best criminologist in the world, neither his determination to make the retentive echoes of memory disappear completely. Neither his determination to reject emotions and people, all the people who he believed were nothing more than hindrances, just good at making fun of him and take advantage of his talents.  
He pushed the world away in an attempt to silence his craving for affection.

He obtained his degree, made himself be hire in a renowned hospital, working hard, talking to no one. He pushed the door of Scotland Yard, offering his medico-legal input on a case, presented himself as consulting detective, solved his first official case, made himself a name.

But the boy was still suffering because of the echoes in his head. The laughs of childhood bullies howling insults like a wolf growls before killing its prey, telling him things like “freak”, “monster”, “pansy”, “little girl”, “you will go to Hell”, “faggot”; the echo of the promise he knew he broke without remembering it, the echo of all the tears he doesn’t remember shedding, the echo of a barking in the night, the echo of his heart beating, remembering him its existence while he yelled at it to shut up.  
There was only one way to make the echoes be silent for a while when the work couldn’t, but he never forgot once to make the list.

Until one time he nearly does. The echoes went louder and louder and more difficult to contain. With desperation he said hello to his old friend and pierced a hole in his vein for the thousand time.  
This time he forgot the list. Only remembered it once he was already drifting into the dullness of the dream; eyes wide he grabbed a piece of paper and managed to write.  
When Mycroft took the list as he found him - thanks to the power he had on CCTV and Sherlock’s constancy in his choice of stash, it didn’t took him more than five hours after he knew what was happening - Mycroft could see the writing was erratic and barely readable.  
But it didn’t mattered, in a way. Sherlock kept his promise, even thought that was a kind of promise Mycroft would be happy to break if it meant there was no list to write.

But Sherlock lived this a different way. He hated himself for it, and had the sudden thought that if he elevated the dose just a little, just a little, all the echoes would be silenced for good.

Sherlock pushed the world so far away he didn’t quite realised someone was looking after him. This man he struggled so much to remember the name knew and made his presence a comfort. Greg Lestrade convinced him to rethink his idea, and kept an affectionate look on the young man he started to see as a friend - a son, maybe, if he was older, or Sherlock younger, though Sherlock looked so young...

He looked so young but behind the candour of his traits there was this underlying wisdom and suffering that made him look like he knew too much of the world. Like he already knew all the despair a person can live in a whole existence.  
Greg could see through it, through the apparent strength and arrogance, and saw the little boy that no one listened when he came to offer his humble help. He could see the despair, without quite understanding why it was here nor what it really meant. He somehow just knew Sherlock needed his affection, so he provided it with the best sincerity he was capable of.

Though Sherlock never realised he made himself a friend, and the despair of loneliness never fade. On the other hand he was so deeply convinced it wasn’t for him, that if he at some point realised, he rejected it, blaming himself for being weak. Blaming himself for being a lonely freak.

During all this time, Mycroft never stopped watching over him. He provided Sherlock a home, he helped him pay the rent when all Sherlock’s money was disappearing in the hands of a skinny man with black circles under his eyes.  
He looked closely at the man who was taking his brother in affection and made him an ally in his task.

That wasn’t exactly enough for Sherlock to make the void and the echoes give him some peace, and he couldn't bear anymore his brother to be always judging him and treating him like a child incapable of taking care of himself. As a challenge he left the apartment he was living in, and began to look for a flat.

He didn’t really needed a flatmate since he had money and the affection of the landlady, but he looked for a flatmate anyway. Maybe in an attempt to check if there was somewhere someone capable of not being afraid by him, someone who would listen, someone who would accept him without trying to use him.

He never thought such a person would exist until he took a first glance on the small blond man standing in front of him.  
When he looked at him and saw the kindness and the pain fighting each other behind the army doctor’s eyes, he thought that he could understand him.  
Sherlock never believed in love at first sight neither he ever believed in love, but his heart clenched at the possibility that maybe this man could heal a bit of his own pain. That he could help him silence the echoes and somehow bring back together the broken pieces.  
While he was deducing everything he could about the man that Stamford introduced as John Watson, he surprised himself to hope a change was possible, just for a moment.

Only for a moment he had a glimpse of things that could be, but the echoes had a strong voice and the hopes had a tiny one.  
But at the end of the day when the soldier saved Sherlock from his loud echoes the voice of the hopes became a little louder.

Echoes and hopes fought for a year, then came the utter fear, but you all know this part of the story, you all know what comes next.  
Then, as Sherlock is shredding the list, Mycroft sees the little boy no one would listen, and he remembers the time when the little boy wasn’t afraid of love.  
And he reads, written in red letters, the name of the last echo, the sound of a broken promise, the sound of their shattered hearts. The strongest chain around Sherlock’s soul, the one he’s not strong enough to break.

The time where he has to act is getting closer, and he knows he can’t push back the fatality of it, however hard he tries. Even if the idea is tearing him appart, the echo has to become a real voice, the repulsed memory has to come back to the surface, this is inevitable.

Standing alone in the plane, he realises. He realises he made a mistake by making Sherlock believe loneliness was his salvation. It only made things worse. It took John Watson to enter their lives, and to see Sherlock’s desperation when he faced a life without him, for Mycroft to realise what was making Sherlock stronger, more able to face the world and unbearable memories.  
But it will take a bullet in Mycroft’s body for Sherlock to realise Mycroft never broke the first promise he silently made, the promise to protect him, whatever the cost is.  
And once again, will come the words Sherlock repeated to himself so many times without knowing the same words existed in John’s heart: “too late”.

 

The boy who learned too soon the wickedness of the world will learn too late its best aspects.  
But maybe not all of them. There is one he will learn soon enough - the happiness of a shared undying love, the love of the only one person who made him feel human.  
A love so absolute it will be able to silence all the echoes in his mind.

All it takes, now that Sherlock isn’t afraid by love and rejection anymore, is for John to see. 

From afar Mycroft will feel like he can finally rest, as the promise was kept.


End file.
